"Emil Petaja - Tramontane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

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Tramontane
Emil Petaja


PART ONE
Wayfarer



тАЬAnd the friendless one reflected:
тАШWherefore have I been created?
Who has made me and has doomed me
Thus тАЩneath moon and sun to wander
Through the starry wastes forever?тАШ тАЭ
KALEVALA: Runo XXXIV
(Rev. SONG OF THE VANHAT:
Runo LI, Cir. 5168)



I


If oneтАЩs destiny is to be expunged like some monstrous mistake by a
death-squad of three perverted louts, then the new hell-hot colony planet
of Ryler 8 on the frontier of known space is as good a place for it to
happen as any.

Better.
 Fed by seven star-suns, the lately formed world still seethed savagely
under its rusty red shell; Mothership Control had named it according to
precedent in honor of the pioneer, Captain Ose Ryler, who discovered it.
Ryler and all his scout-ship crew had been charred into meaningless flakes
by the then unguessed gaseous discharge from one of the cracks in the
hell-planetтАЩs crust. Ryler 8 was of ugly sanguinary color and uglier
disposition, an uneasy stepping-stone to Still Further Out. Custom entitled
it only the hardiest, most desperate of Mothership colonists; its motley
bag of humanity included misfits and problem types of many varieties
who had to be finally decanted from their Mothership somewhere.

Kullervo Kasi was such a misfit. If there were any hidden character
traits on the worthy side of the ledger they could not be detected in his